Category Archives: Projects

A previous post announced ‘the Beginning of the End’ for the rediscovering Ripleyville blog; the slow retirement of the blog while I carry on with research and writing. This post set out what comes after – A New Beginning!

a short post – making clear what will be happening with the rRV blog and to clear up any misunderstanding

Not retiring : retiring the rediscovering Ripleyville blog – slowly

I received one almost immediate response to my ‘Beginning of the End’ post about the rediscovering Ripleyville blog. It assumed I was ‘retiring’. For some of those who were of working age during the Thatcher years, retiring now isn’t an option, except to real or relative poverty. It is not something I will be choosing.

As I stated in the previous post;

I will still be researching the Victorian history of the area and writing about it.

But:-

… new or consolidated findings about Ripley Ville or Ripley Ville related topics will not be published on this web-site and blog.

This post announces the beginning of the end for the rediscovering Ripleyville blog and sets out some future arrangements for availability of content and keeping in contact.

rediscovering Ripley Ville blog : the Beginning of the End

110 posts and bow out?

If you have been visiting this site over the past 4 years or are visiting for the first time, you may know or notice that there has been no new post to it since May 6th – nearly 4 months.

It hasn’t been a conscious decision not to post. There are two long draft posts awaiting completion, a third has a provisional title, plans for a forth have been sketched. Things have just stopped. Holidays, other priorities, paid work, good walking weather and, when it comes down to it, a tailing off in motivation are major reasons.

I was motivated to get to 100 posts; a total achieved at the beginning of this year. I wasn’t fully satisfied because some of these posts are very short, others are about the so far unsuccessful attempt to promote a rediscovering Ripley Ville project and set-up a Ripleyville group in parallel to the web-site. They were about organisation rather than the process of historical rediscovery or research findings about Ripley Ville.

The account on Wikipedia is wrong on a number of crucial points about the worker’s housing built between 1866 and 1868 in the Victorian industrial model village of Ripley Ville, These relate to whether water-closets were installed in each of the 196 Working -mens Dwellings”, on the village’s northern site in Bowling, south Bradford. The errors are identified in this post and a better version of events laid out. The post starts with a RVr news update. It ends by emphasising how regrettable the demolition of the village’s northern site is, in heritage terms.

News Update

Work on the new ‘Ripley Ville rediscovered’ (RVr) web-sites on the Victorian industrial model village of Ripley Ville is behind schedule.

Time has been given over instead to exploring several long trails in archival material about the village’s Victorian beginnings. The searches have focused on the water-closets that are understood to have been built in the basements (cellars) of the 196 Workmens Dwellings of the village.

The water-closet controversy : its importance

If water-closets were installed this would make the houses, in their sanitary status and arrangements, the most advanced then built for the working classes. When taken together with the number installed, this would significantly enhance the importance of Ripley Ville as an industrial model village and of ‘Messrs Ripleys scheme…’ for workers housing.

This post looks to the future for this WordPress hosted rediscovering Ripleyville web-site, blog posts and the rediscovering Ripleyville project. It reveals a plan to gradually move most of its content. This will be split between TWO NEW Ripleyville web-sites. It also notes two events that suggest small changes may be occurring in how Bradford’s Victorian Heritage offer is made. These give encouragement for future activities around rediscovering Ripleyville.

The first part of this post picks up on Graham Wilkinson’s comment about ‘delving into history’ and outlines an idea for a Victorian history and heritage project for Bowling, south Bradford. The second explains the present and likely future position on Membership of the rRV project and for people who have signed up as ‘Friends’ of ‘rediscovering Ripleyville’. Looking towards the future, the post ends on a positive note.

I’m breaking my blogging silence for a very brief post.
Can’t let Bradford City’s well-deserved ‘biggest FA cup upset’ win against Chelsea go by without a mention.
I have also this week backtracked from taking rediscovering Ripleyville onto Facebook, or more accurately getting myself on there as well. They seem to want to know your inside leg measurement and which way you dress before your personal profile is ‘complete’. O K I’m exaggerating but sorry Face-bookers I’ve looked at it and it’s just not my thing. So, the ‘Rediscovering Ripleyville’ Facebook page will be deleted. This will happen, in their words, ‘within the next 14 days’.
Any rRV up-dates to the end of February will now go through this site.

This is a “See you again, sometime” post; the type of “good-bye” that is not intended to be final but where you make no immediate plans for when you might meet.

After three weeks and a follow-up appointment at Bradford Royal Infirmary, the hope is that my ‘something and nothing’ is probably more of a nothing – or at least unlikely to recur. We shall see. But, with each passing week, the three weeks without doing a post on the blog have confirmed for me that I have made the right decision. For the foreseeable future other priorities, including research on Victorian Ripley Ville, must come first.

All the rRV blog posts are now “password protected” – rather than just a few.

It wasn’t planned.

It was one of those ’something and nothing’ things that brought it about. I had a couple of days in hospital last week; nothing life threatening though it was unpleasant enough for me to want to avoid a repeat. But it did make me stop.

Once stopped and under doctor’s instructions to, “Take it easy for a week”, plans that would have taken the blog and the rediscovering Ripleyville project through to and beyond 15th November next year – and Ripley Ville’s 150th anniversary – just started to unravel.

rRV web-site Conditions of Use

They tell you what to do and what not to do, so the rediscovering Ripleyville project can do what it needs to do.

They set out:-

The need to license rediscovering Ripley Ville (rRV) content

The status of content elsewhere on the internet about Victorian Ripley Ville

The rRV quality guarantee

The guidelines are for ‘for-profit’ individuals or groups (local or otherwise) and those in the ‘not-for -profit’ or ‘profit-for-purpose’ sectors, who create work or publish to the internet on Ripleyville and related topics.

All visitors to the site should read them. They form part of the conditions of use of the publicly accessible areas of the web-site and its public content.

Local Benefit & Content Licences

Beneficiaries

It is the intention of the rediscovering Ripleyville (rRV) project to bring benefit to the people living and working close to where Victorian Ripley Ville was built and where earlier events occurred that led to the village’s development.

Social Enterprise model

One way of locking in benefit is to license content from this web-site or the research activity of the rediscovering Ripley Ville project. That has always been the intention of this site and the rediscovering Ripleyville project. Licences to funded not-for-profit groups and organisations, the public sector and for-profit publication would command a fee on a sliding scale (details on request).

This is a variation on a model that has been made familiar by everything from High Street charity shops to the Big Issue seller. It is a Social Enterprise model that uses trading to supplement other income streams. It is used by many groups in Heritage-related projects.

Licences for use of content

Need to licence rRV content

For the last 30 weeks a message in the side bar left has requested that not-for-profit organisations apply for a licence to use content from this site.

Previously not-for-profit use of content was allowed where this site was indicated as the source of that content. This was intended to cover occasional reciprocal arrangements.

No rRV licences issued

As of today, 5th February 2015, use of the content of the rRV web-site has not been licensed to any other web-based author, group or their publisher. Nor has it been issued for print-based publishing.

How to recognise licenced content

When a licence is granted, licencees publishing content from this site would be required to include a form of words agreed with this project. Where this was to the web this would include a hyperlink to this site.

A list of licencees and of licensed use of content will also appear on this web-site.

Fair, Friendly, Collaborative, Lawful?

Occasional unacknowledged use of images from this site has occurred and has been brought to rRv’s attention. Inadequately referenced and unacknowledged use of content from this site continues. Blog-post are also appearing on two content scaper sites. Action will be taken against these to assert copyright.

Fair

Are you playing fair?

Don’t copy rRV content without permission or a licence.

Don’t infringe copyright law.

Fair Dealing

Use of content for private use, for review purposes or where this constitutes ‘fair dealing’ within copyright law requires no licence.

Friendly

rediscovering Ripleyville has reciprocal informal arrangements for the occasional sharing of an image or images or text with contributors or unfunded history web-sites of individuals publishing about West Bowling. These are made on an ad hoc (case by case) basis.

A simple request by ‘phone, text or e-mail to this project (see Contacts) is usually all that is needed to agree this.

Collaborative

Use of content where this is in line with the rediscovering Ripley Ville project’s aims or for promotional purposes and by individuals or groups supporting rRV aims is unaffected by this notice and welcomed.

Competitive & Unfriendly

Neither the rRV project nor its main contributor R L (Bob) Walker have (as of 5th Feb 2015), directly contributed content to any other internet site. We have not and do not contribute to the Wikipedia site bearing the Ripleyville name. We have not authorised or licensed use of content from this site on Wikipedia.

Use of the rRV logo

Quality : rRV logo is your guarantee

A process available in doing history is that of triangulation; the use of at least three reliable and different documents or artifacts to confirm or qualify a statement or conclusion. These could be of a different provenance or of a different kind, e.g. OS map, records of public authority, illustrations or photographs, manuscript, diary, newspaper or other contemporary report or account.

Many of the blog posts on this web-site are drafts. They may be and often will be about what is provisional; knowledge accumulated so far.

In order not to over-claim, posts will say if knowledge is provisional or more speculative or where further research is needed.

The rRV logo is your guarantee of quality of research.

The removal of the rRV logo from content published to this site and the content’s use and publication in another document could be unlawful.

The addition of the rRV logo to content generated outside of this project is a form of ‘passing off’ and could be fraudulent in law.

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Copyright

Unauthorised use and/or duplication of material without the express written permission from the author and/or owner of this blog and web-site is strictly prohibited.
Excerpts and links may be used provided that full and clear credit is given to R L (Bob) Walker & rediscoveringripleyville.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Local not for profit organisations and educational institutions should apply for a license for use of copyrighted material.

If you think I am infringing your copyright or license, let me know. I will put it right. Every effort will be made to make good, within 7 days, any content subject to complaint, or otherwise requiring correction.

R L (Bob) Walker

The aims of this web-site are to make more people aware that, for 100 years Bradford, West Yorkshire, had another industrial model village; 'Ripley Ville' and to restore the village and Bowling Dyeworks to their proper place in the story of 'Worstedopolis' (Victorian Bradford)

Housekeeping on this site

I have tried, to the best of my ability and knowledge, to make what appears in this blog accurate in historical terms. If you find something doesn’t ring true, let me know.

There are three kinds of images in this blog; images copyrighted but subject to permissions or license agreements, copies of images collected by me over the last 10 years that I understand to be out of copyright, license free or as yet undetermined and photos I have taken. If you want to get someone else to look at an image get them to come to this blog!

Joint endeavour

This blog, perhaps more than most blogs, is intended to be part of a joint endeavour aimed at rediscovering Ripleyville; south Bradford’s industrial model village. Comments are always welcome. For current options on longer contributions see 'Adding Content' page.